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Business News/ Opinion / Online Views/  ‘Man of Steel’, US Immigration and H1-B Visas
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‘Man of Steel’, US Immigration and H1-B Visas

‘Man of Steel’ is a reminder that Superman, the icon of American masculine values, is not American by birth at all

Henry Cavill in a still from the film ‘Man of Steel’. (Henry Cavill in a still from the film ‘Man of Steel’. )Premium
Henry Cavill in a still from the film ‘Man of Steel’.
(Henry Cavill in a still from the film ‘Man of Steel’. )

The question that lurked in our minds—as would have in the minds of many people—as we staggered into the dark hall to watch the new Superman film Man of Steel was: What was Christopher Nolan going to do with most boring superhero ever? Over the last decade, film franchises of comic book heroes have been becoming darker and more morally complex. If I am not wrong, Sam Raimi started off the trend with his Spiderman series, with Peter Parker (aka Spidey) portrayed as a shy young man, and not only emotionally unsure but also struggling to make ends meet. In fact, Spiderman 2 was perhaps the first superhero film that ended on a somewhat desolate note. The X-Men series, at least initially, was an allegory of the discomfort and hostility that is society’s instinctive response to the differently enabled.

Nolan then decided to attack Batman with all the European noir armoury he had at his disposal in the Dark Knight series. But he had fertile soil to plough. Batman has always been a troubled creature and more than a bit of a weirdo, and the villains he battles are not the run-of-the-mill world domination wackos. The Joker, Bane and their ilk are serious psychos, super-intelligent self-aware freaks who prey on human frailty and goodness and pose questions at the edge of the moral choice precipice. It was perfect hunting ground for Nolan (previously auteur of such grim cinema as Memento and Insomnia).

But Superman? He is the ultimate all-American hero, representing all that is good in humankind. A being who comes to us with a halo and a pedestal as free accessories. OK, so Nolan is not the director of Man of Steel, but he is the producer and co-writer, so, as we fumbled on our 3D glasses, we were keen to know how he would subvert this utterly flawless—and therefore, one-dimensional—character.

Previous Superman films have mostly been about Superman and his super-villains throwing 32-wheel trucks and communication satellites at each other, and bashing one another on the head with uprooted skyscrapers. That is a staple and much of that is there—now powered by extreme CGI (computer-generated imagery) and 3D. In fact, the last 45 minutes of the film is nothing but that, and the level of destruction wrought on Metropolis, Superman’s home town, is, well, titanic. But the first 100 minutes of the film has Nolan prying interesting complexity out of a cardboard demigod in a billboardish world.

We meet Clark Kent first in his pre-Superman days, as a young wanderer trying to find himself. He has a beard and a hairy chest; hard-core comic book readers will recognise how much courage it takes to do that: give Superman a beard and a hairy chest. Kent knows that he is an alien (from the faraway planet of Krypton) and feels—don’t laugh—severely alienated. At the same time, he wants to blend into the crowd, just be a normal American, but every now and then, some calamity happens and human life is threatened, and he can’t help but rush in and shore up collapsing oil rigs and stuff. When evil aliens from Krypton led by General Zod land up on earth to find Kent, the US government’s attitude towards Kent is the same as towards Zod and his minions. All aliens are bad news. Destroy them.

Get the subtext? Clark Kent, or Kal-El (his original name on Krypton) is an immigrant to the US, which, post 9/11, as we all know, is suspicious of immigrants. Yet, the US is a country that, in all its glory, has been built entirely—and still is being built—by immigrants, from Sergei Brin to Bobby Jindal. It is Kal-El, a naturalised American citizen (he was after all born in a different galaxy) who saves the US from its greatest threat ever. The difference between him and Zod is that Zod wants to destroy the earth’s way of life and create a new Krypton here, while Kal-El wants to preserve his beautiful new home, and does so, by defeating those evil foreigners. Fundamentally, Man of Steel is a reminder that Superman, the icon of good American masculine values, is not American by birth at all. Yet, he is the saviour of America, and a stronger believer in basic American principles than many so-called true-blue Americans. Ergo, it is in America’s interest to allow more immigration, and stop this stupid racial profiling.

At the very least, issue thousands more H1-B visas.

By the way, Man of Steel is produced by Christopher Nolan, an Englishman; set to music by Hans Zimmer, a German-born American; it boasts of Amir Mokri, an Iranian-born American as cinematographer, and Alex McDowell, an Englishman, as production designer. Kal-El/ Clark Kent/ Superman is played by Henry Cavill, an Englishman.

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Published: 17 Jun 2013, 02:05 PM IST
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